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I live and blog in Ann Arbor, Michigan. University of Michigan BA and MA from Eastern Michigan University. One term in the Michigan Army National Guard. The Institute of Land Warfare, Army magazine, Infantry Magazine, Military Review, Naval Institute Proceedings, and Joint Force Quarterly have published my occasional articles.

The Undead Archives

My undead archives pre-Blogger were actually restored to life after Geocities sites went dark. Start at the old home page here.
If you find a link to the old site on the current site or old site, you should be able to replace the "g" in "geocities" with an "r" and make a good link.
Another archived site is here.
It replaces the ".com" with ".ws".
I hope to move all the older archives here (and started that project) but it is really tedious.

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

The Future of Ukraine

So getting a nuclear-armed Russia to simply retreat from their Ukraine conquests and their demands that Ukraine remain within Russia's orbit is beyond our power to do without risking war with a nuclear power.

As President Kennedy once said (quoted in this article about avoiding war with Russia over Ukraine), "Above all, while defending our vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war."

We don't need to humiliate Russia to defend our national interests.

To me, it seems that the solution rests on Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, Crimea as a Russian base, the fate of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian membership in NATO, and removal of sanctions on Russia.

Russia simply must (again, I know) recognize Ukraine as a sovereign nation and recognize their post-agreement borders.

Crimea would be returned to Ukraine while Russia gets a Crimean Base Zone (as we had with the Panama Canal Zone before we returned it to Panama) that is de facto under Russian administration, which Russia pays substantial rent to use on a long-term basis.

Russia had this base before the crisis, so it isn't a defeat for us if they keep it.

Ukraine would provide guaranteed land access to the the Crimean Base Zone (as we had for West Berlin through East Germany during the Cold War) via that bridge the Russians plan to build at the Kerch Strait.

Ukraine could still work with NATO or NATO states to improve their defenses, but there would be no joining NATO as long as Russia didn't formally take over all of Crimea, thus defining Ukraine as a state without a non-NATO base eligible to join the alliance.

This would seem to be a setback since it deprives Ukraine of the option of joining NATO. But if I understand the rules, Ukraine couldn't anyway unless we changed the rules.

It is certainly not a defeat for us. We don't really need NATO that far east since we have no intention of attacking Russia; and extending NATO's military power from the west all that way east to Ukraine's border with Russia is beyond our capacity when just getting member states to spend 2% of their GDP on defense is a struggle.

All we really need is a Ukraine not available to Russia as a launching pad to project military power west or south. A Ukraine that looks to the West for support to resist Russia and maintain their sovereignty and territorial integrity is good enough.

The fate of Donbas and other areas is more tricky. It depends on whether Russia really wants to annex the territory or whether Russia would rather have Donbas remain within Ukraine as a Trojan Horse so that its voters would presumably remain a pro-Russian influence inside Ukraine.

So let those Ukrainians in the east choose. Let Ukraine make their offer to Ukrainians in Donbas for some level of autonomy within Ukraine and let Russia make their offer to Donbas for annexation to Russia.

Then have internationally supervised elections that let voters decide between just these two options.

Russia and Ukraine would be constrained in harshness of terms by the prospect that the other side's offer would look better.

Allow the individual losers in the election the option of moving to Ukraine if Donbas goes to Russia or moving to Russia if Donbas stays with Ukraine. A world fund (I suppose that would mean us, worst case) would pay for the relocations.

Perhaps Russia pays Ukraine for the lost economic assets if Donbas joins Russia by selling energy at reduced rates for 20 years, or some such compensation.

And as long as Ukraine and Russia have signed a peace treaty, there is no reason to maintain Western sanctions on Russia.

Ukraine gets financial resources, either loses hostile people or demonstrates that those people are not pining for rescue by Putin, Ukraine remains out of Russia's orbit with limited military ties to NATO, and Ukraine regains formal title to Crimea.

I think there is potential for this kind of outline to get us all back in our corners.

UPDATE: If we can't make this a Sevastopol Crisis, this will grow to be a Ukraine Crisis and possibly a NATO Crisis as NATO states take proper defensive measures that the dangerously paranoid and dishonest Russian rulers will call offensive in nature.

The exercise, which is part of a broad, cross-continental mission known as Operation Atlantic Resolve, is designed to be a show of force against a Russia that annexed Crimea in March 2014 and continues to assist pro-Russian rebels in East Ukraine. Recent deployments have seen the U.S. military train with local forces in the Baltic and Balkan states, as well as Germany, Poland and Ukraine itself.

As part of those operations, the A-10 has been deployed to Germany, the United Kingdom, Poland and now Romania.

"We ... support the neutrality, independence and sovereignty of your country in the interests of the whole region," said Gen. Adrian Bradshaw, deputy supreme allied commander in Europe, during a visit Thursday to the Moldovan capital, Chisinau.

So continued Russian aggression that keeps this a crisis above the narrow issue of preserving Russia's pre-crisis basing rights in Crimea could escalate this crisis to a level neither we nor the Russians should want.

It's been nicknamed the "Great Wall of Ukraine." Its planned combination of barbed-wire fences, watchtowers, berms, and tank traps along Ukraine's 1,300-mile border with Russia look like something you'd find on one of Israel's borders with its hostile neighbors.

If it's ever completed, the wall will seal a frontier that, until last year, had always been wide open. Inaugurating construction here last fall, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk indicated that much more than just a physical barrier was intended. "This will be the eastern border of Europe," he said.

But in nearby Kharkiv, an overwhelmingly Russian-speaking city of one-and-a-half million, mention of the wall is mostly greeted with snorts of irritation. The idea of splitting permanently and irrevocably from Russia wins virtually no acceptance. Many people here have family and friends in Russia, the local economy is heavily dependent on trade with Russia, and some say they just can't wrap their heads around the idea of a frontier being there in the first place.

One, nice slap at always target-worthy Israel as if they are the only ones to build walls to keep out attackers. Saudi Arabia has one facing Iraq. Kenya wants one facing Somalia.

But back to the Ukraine wall. At one level I want to slap those locals with the clue bat. Are they unaware that Russia has invaded Ukraine? Surely it has made the local news. That would explain explosions around you.

On the other hand, popular views are popular views whether they should be popular or not. So Kiev has do consider that in how they implement the policy even if the border defenses need to be built.

I don't rule out that only Russia's hand puppets are complaining. But border hassles are an annoyance as I've documented here with my own travels to Canada.

One more reason to try to localize the crisis to one of Sevastopol, no?

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Note on site statistics: When I strip out the junk hits from Blogger statistics that seem to come and go in waves, I appear to have about 10,000 hits per month.

My old statistics package, Site Meter, seems to miss a lot and even disappears visits after they've appeared.

I just added a new StatCounter. So far it shows far fewer hits than Blogger and is more in line with Site Meter. But I suspect neither of the non-Blogger statistics register hits from social media. So I'm not sure what my audience size is. It is puzzling to me.